In a career retrospective interview with GQ magazine, M. Night Shyamalan reflected on how studio executives resisted marketing his 2000 film Unbreakable as a comic book movie.
Shyamalan, who was coming off the massive success of The Sixth Sense—which earned $672 million worldwide and six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture—recalled that despite its superhero theme, the studio preferred to promote Unbreakable as a horror-thriller.
Shyamalan expressed frustration over the studio’s reluctance to embrace the film’s true genre, noting, “If you deny what it is because you’re afraid of it being different, then you’re stealing all of its strength.” He recounted the studio’s fear of the comic book label, saying, “They were like, ‘We had one of the biggest movies of all time and the same two people are making another movie.
Let’s make it look like that movie,’ rather than recognizing it as the start of a new genre. They were too scared to say the words ‘comic book.’” According to Shyamalan, the studio’s belief that no one would watch a comic book movie limited the film’s marketing and reception.
He envisioned the movie as a story about an ordinary man who survives a catastrophic accident, only to be revealed as a real-life superhero—a concept that was never fully communicated to the audience. The studio’s decision led to fan disappointment, as expectations set by The Sixth Sense did not align with Unbreakable’s actual content.
Shyamalan learned an important lesson about partnering with those who understand the need for reinvention in storytelling. Released in fall 2000, Unbreakable came out shortly after X-Men began to popularize the comic book genre, with the genre only truly exploding after Spider-Man in 2002.